The words lingered at the back of his mind. He pushed them away. He couldn’t afford to relive Capri — to relive his failings there — every day.
He’d never had anything to lose, had never had anything to protect, until Aria. He knew better now, knew why Farrell and Nico and the others kept houses all over the world, stored vast quantities of money offshore.
As soon as Damian eliminated Gatti and Anastos, he would follow suit, start building his own network of hideaways, places Aria would be safe and anonymous if anything went south again. He would make sure alternate passports were at the ready, that he had an exit plan to get Aria out of New York in under an hour should the occasion call for it, that his money and other holdings were set up to revert to Aria in the event of his death.
He kissed her head as she leaned against his shoulder in the backseat and the car started up the network of winding hills that led to the house.
All that mattered now was her.
Nine
Aria washed her face in the bathroom that connected to their private suite and looked at her face in the mirror. Was it fuller than it used to be? Would Damian notice?
She straightened and turned sideways, lifting up her tank top and pulling her boxer shorts away from her body to get a better look at her stomach.
It was as flat as ever, though her breasts seemed to get fuller and more tender by the day. She was almost three months pregnant and the clock was ticking on the time she had left to tell Damian before he noticed.
Nervousness sat in her stomach like a lead balloon. What if he wasn’t happy? What if he didn’t want to bring children into such a dangerous world?
She dropped her shirt and let her boxers snap back into place. She didn’t believe that. She was carrying their child, a child made of their love. Damian would be as fiercely protective of their baby as he was of her, which was why they needed to find Anastos and Malcolm as soon as possible.
She turned off the light and walked into the bedroom to find Damian not undressed and waiting for her as she’d expected, but sitting on the edge of the bed, his forehead creased with concern.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s happened?”
He patted his lap. “Come here.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. Whatever he had to tell her wasn’t good. “Tell me.”
He sighed. “You can’t come to Athens, Aria. I think you know that.”
It took a few seconds for the words to sink in. When they did, she crossed to her bag and started moving things into the room’s empty bureau.
“No, I don’t know that, Damian.”
“You do,” he insisted. “Jesus, Aria… I can’t even believe you’d want to go back after what you endured there.”
She spun to face him. “Do you?”
“Of course not,” he said. “But it has to be done.”
“Exactly. Which is why I’m going to help find Anastos.”
He shook his head, his eyes turning stormy as he stood. “It’s not the same.”
You’re right, she thought. I’m pregnant. It’s not the same at all.
A bitter laugh escaped her mouth. “Because I’m a woman.”
She felt sick. She was gaslighting him, making him think he was wrong for keeping her on the island when he had every reason to do it — he just didn’t know it yet.
It was fucked up and wrong and she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
He put his hands on her shoulders. “Because you’re the reason I draw breath. The reason my heart keeps beating.”
She ignored the flush of pleasure that rolled through her body at the possessiveness in his voice.
“That’s not good enough, Damian. This is my fight, too.”
He removed his hands, paced the floor. “Don’t you think I know that, Aria? Don’t you think I remember every day what they did to you?”
He stepped through the open glass door and leaned on the railing that looked out over the water. She watched him from inside the room for a few seconds before standing in the door frame.
“Do you know what it does to me to think about you anywhere near those monsters?” His voice was so low she had to strain to hear him.
She swallowed around the emotion clogging her throat. “I do, Damian.”
He turned to face her, anguish written on his face. “If you did, you wouldn’t even ask to come to Athens.”
She moved toward him, wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned her head against his strong chest. “I’m sorry.”
His arms came around her, a shelter from every storm.
He held her face in his hands and looked into her eyes. “I’m not looking to kill your spirit, Aria. I’m not trying to change you. I’m just trying to protect you.”
“I know that,” she said. “I just… I need to do something. All these weeks of planning since the shooting at Velvet… I’m tired of waiting.”
He smiled a little. “No one understands that more than me. I’ve been itching for blood for months. But we have to be smart. We have to be disciplined. That’s what makes us different from men like Anastos and Gatti.”
And men like Primo.
He didn’t say it, but she couldn’t help thinking it.
She nodded. “You’re right.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Would you mind repeating that?”
She punched playfully at his shoulder. “You’re right. You’re always right. My wanting to go was never about that.”
He pulled her close. “I understand, but I need you to trust me here.”
“I need you to trust me, too,” she said.
“I’ve never trusted anyone more,” he said. “It’s everyone else I don’t trust. Athens is still Anastos’ home turf. We have no idea what we’re walking into. If you’re with us, I won’t be able to do anything but worry about you, Aria.”
She knew what he was saying. If she insisted on coming along, she would be a weakness, not because she couldn’t handle herself, but because Damian would be preoccupied with her safety.
Is that what she wanted? For Damian to be distracted in Anastos’ city because of her?
She exhaled all the tension she’d been holding, all the frustration. “You have to give me something to do here,” she said. “I’ll go crazy otherwise.”
“I can do that,” he said, relief visible on this face.
“But this doesn’t mean I’m always going to wait at home,” she continued. “I’m not going to be the little woman, Damian. I’m never going to be that.”
She didn’t know how the other Syndicate wives worked, how involved they were in Syndicate business, but Damian was her man.
New York was her city.
She would always fight for them to be safe there.
“Do you really think there’s any danger of that happening?” He laughed and shook his head, then bent his head to kiss her. “I wouldn’t want you to be anything but what you are, my love. But you’re going to have to work with me a little.”
She tightened her arms around him and leaned her head against his chest, found the drumbeat of his heart, her favorite lullaby.
“I can do that,” she said.
She was pretty sure she believed it.
Ten
Damian waited for Aria to fall asleep to slip from the room. They’d made up the way they always did, the passion of their conflict continuing in bed where he charted her body with his hands and tongue.
He wondered if he would ever stop fearing she would be taken from him again. If he would ever stop feeling the need to memorize every detail of her face, every curve and hollow of her body like a starving man afraid someone was going to take his last piece of bread.
He closed the door behind him and made his way through the quiet house. He was surprised to find the windows still open, the crash of waves against the cliffs echoing across the tile floors. Locke obviously had a more laissez-faire attitude about their security than Damian did, a fact that both comforted and worried him.
; Locke was either very confident or very careless.
He was easing the back door open when he heard the cock of a handgun from the shadows.
He put his hands in the air and turned around. “It’s me.”
Locke stepped into the moonlight leaking in from the windows. “I thought so.”
“Then why the fuck are you pointing a gun at me?” Damian asked quietly.
“Just making sure,” Locke said.
Damian shook his head. Locke was either going to save their asses or get them all killed.
The jury was still out.
“I need to talk to Cole,” Damian said.
Locke set the gun down on a side table and made his way to the kitchen. “So go.”
“You going to shoot me on my way back in?” Damian asked.
Locke took a swig of water from a bottle in the fridge. “Unlikely.”
“How comforting,” Damian said.
Locke shrugged, his teeth glinting in the darkness as he grinned.
Fucker.
He opened the back door and stepped onto the courtyard that separated the main house from the guest house where Cole and Derek were sleeping. He reached for his phone and texted.
Outside. Let’s talk.
A light came on near the back of the diminutive structure. Cole was stepping outside less then two minutes later looking wide awake.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Let’s sit,” Damian said, indicating the deck chairs scattered around the pool.
Cole sat in the chair across from Damian.
There was no point mincing words.
“I need you to stay here with Aria while we go to Athens,” Damian said.
Cole hesitated, then nodded, his expression revealing nothing. Normally, Damian wouldn’t bother explaining himself. It was one of the advantages of being head of the organization.
But this was different. Cole had started with him when he’d had nobody. They had been a team, their mutual concern centered around the growth of the business and their survival.
Aria changed their dynamic, and if Damian had it his way, it would be forever changed. It was something Cole would have to get used to, but Damian wanted to make sure the other man knew he was valued, that his unique skillset and the trust Damian had in him would be even more important with Aria in the picture, even if if seemed like the jobs themselves were more mundane.
He wanted Cole to know he considered him a friend. A brother.
“I know it seems like a waste of your talents,” Damian continued. “I rely on you more than you know. You’re the only man I trust to have my back. The only one I trust to have Aria’s back.”
“Is this an indefinite assignment?” Cole asked.
“No,” Damian said firmly. “Once we eliminate Anastos and Gatti, we’ll reassess our security needs, come up with a plan to provide Aria with a private detail we can count on.”
“Okay,” Cole said.
“Thank you. She’s the most important thing in the world to me. I’m entrusting her to you. Do you understand?”
He nodded. “I’ll guard her with my life.”
Damian stood, rested a hand on Cole’s shoulder in the moment before he turned for the main house. “I’m counting on it.”
Eleven
Aria stood up and stretched, her eyes drifting to the horizon. It was magnetic, and she found herself looking out over the sea every time she looked up from the computer Damian had given her before he left for Athens that morning.
She was half-surprised she was able to enjoy Greece after what had happened to her in Athens. True, Kythnos wasn’t Athens. With its sandy beaches and azure water, its sparkling stucco houses balanced on the cliffs and the scent of the ocean, it might have been a tropical hideaway off the coast of any country in the Mediterranean.
Still, she knew Athens was just across the water. Knew if she made her way to the seedy neighborhood called Omonia, she would find the dingy apartment where she’d been kept prisoner for two months, where she’d dreamed of freedom and Damian, where she’d wondered if she would ever see him again.
And yet, it felt a lifetime away.
She’d thought at first it was the water separating the island of Kythnos from the mainland, but she’d come to the conclusion that it had nothing to do with that.
It was Damian.
When he was near, she was home, and she knew she was safe. Even now that he was in Athens, looking for Anastos while she remained on the island with Cole, she felt secure.
Damian was her talisman against every evil.
She wandered into the kitchen and poured another cup of tea. She was stirring honey into it when Cole stepped into the house from the courtyard.
She could only assume his many trips outside throughout the morning were the result of a security check. He hadn’t said two words to her since Damian and the others had left.
“Want some tea?” she asked him.
“No, thank you,” he said, lowering himself to the sofa in the living room where he’d left a book whose title she hadn’t been able to read.
“Come on,” she said, pulling another cup off the shelf and making a second cup of tea. “Bring your book outside and have some tea. It’s beautiful out.”
He nodded and rose to his feet. “If you insist.”
“I do,” she said, pushing the cup of tea toward him. “I’ve been staring at that computer screen all day, although…”
It suddenly occurred to her that Cole might feel obligated to keep her company. She was Damian’s woman, for lack of a better word. That meant that in a weird twist of fate, she was also Cole’s boss.
“Although?” he prompted.
Her face grew warm. This was a lot more complicated than she expected.
“You don’t have to keep me company,” she said. “I just thought it would be nice.”
He picked up the tea. “You’re right. I could do with the fresh air.”
She hid a smile as he made his way out to the terrace. He was probably as bored as she was.
They sat around the table and sipped their tea. The silence was surprisingly comfortable. She knew Cole was a man of few words, but she’d only been alone with him on rare occasions since she’d gotten out of the hospital. They’d always been at the house in Westchester, and she’d usually been busy at the firing range or in the greenhouse.
“I’m sorry you have to stay here,” she finally said.
“It’s not your fault,” he said.
“Yes, it is. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be in Athens with the other men.”
“You act like this is a downgrade,” he said.
She looked up, wondering if she was seeing a hint of humor in his blue eyes.
“Isn’t it?” she asked.
He hesitated, looked out over the water. “Do you know what my job is with Damian?”
“You’re his underboss,” she said. “Like Malcolm was for Primo.”
“No,” he said. “Not like that.”
She immediately regretted her choice of words. Malcolm hadn’t cared about Primo. He’d seen Primo as a tool for his own agenda, had manipulated her brother to his own end.
In contrast, Cole’s deep loyalty to Damian was obvious.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s not what I meant. I know you’re not like Malcolm. I just meant that you’re his first-in-command.”
“Yes,” he said. “And that means my number one priority is to protect Damian and his interests.”
She turned her cup in her hand. “And I’m one of his… interests.”
“You’re more than that, and you know it.” She looked up and met his eyes. “You’re his primary concern now, the only thing that really matters to him.”
There was no point demurring. Cole was right; Damian loved and needed her as much as she loved and needed him. She saw it every time he looked at her, felt it when he wrapped his arms around her, when he smoothed her hair or kissed the top of her head as she was falling asleep in
his arms.
“What does that mean for you?” she asked him.
“It means that in the context of my position with the Cavallo organization, you’re my primary concern too.” His eyes were like chips of blue ice. “I won’t lie, I’d prefer to be on the streets with Damian, but it’s not a downgrade to be entrusted with the protection of the person he loves most in the world. It’s an honor.”
She was moved to silence by his words. This was loyalty — the kind of loyalty she’d once felt for Primo, the kind of loyalty she now felt for Damian.
It was loyalty that demanded everything of you, that could empty you out if you let it.
Loyalty born of love.
No one but Damian had ever displayed that kind of loyalty for her. She was temporarily overcome by the fact that Damian felt it for her, and that by virtue of his loyalty to Damian, Cole felt it, too. She had to fight against the feeling that she didn’t deserve it. That she was unworthy of so much devotion.
“Thank you.” It didn’t seem like enough, but it was all she had.
“No thanks required.” He glanced at the open computer on the patio table. “Any luck?”
“Not yet,” she said.
Damian had been true to his word, tasking her with shaking the bushes in New York for news on Malcolm’s whereabouts. Damian had his men on it, too, but he reasoned that Aria might have a better shot at flushing out the man who had been so closely tied to her brother. She knew Malcolm’s habits, his favorite haunts, his weaknesses and preferences.
It might not lead to anything. If Malcolm was smart, he would have left New York after the shooting at Velvet two months earlier. If he was dumb enough to stay in the city, he should be deep in hiding, avoiding all the people and places Aria might associate with him.
But cornered animals sometimes acted against their own self-interests. Overcome with fear, they were likely to make mistakes.
Their job was to capitalize on those mistakes.
Aria had spent the morning calling a few of the establishments she knew Malcolm frequented. Not everyone was intimately connected to her brother’s business, and she’d been careful to ask casually after the health of the people on the other end of the phone, to make a show of catching up before mentioning Malcolm in passing.
Through the Fire Page 5
